Who are the mysterious “new entrants” supposedly on the verge of entering the TV world?

Over the past few months, executives at major media companies including
Time Warner Inc.,Walt Disney Co.
DIS -0.80%
, 21st Century Fox and
Viacom Inc.
VIAB -2.05%
have been teasing the idea that several new entrants may be eagerly pursuing deals to carry their channels on new online pay-TV services. During earnings calls last week, Viacom and Disney executives mentioned such players as a potential area of new growth to assuage investor fears about declining U.S. pay-TV subscribers.

But investors shouldn’t get too excited just yet.

New Web video services are being explored by companies including Apple,
Alphabet Inc.’s
GOOGL -1.76%
YouTube,
Amazon.com Inc.,
AMZN -1.80%T-Mobile US,
TMUS -2.01%
and
AT&T,
T -1.65%
according to people familiar with the companies’ plans, but none of them seem prepared to launch imminently and talks aren’t advanced. All of these companies have held talks with big media companies of late about licensing their channels or programming to launch a TV offering delivered over the Internet, these people say. Representatives for the companies declined to comment for this article.

Many of these players would like to deliver a subscription pay-TV package that includes the most-viewed networks—a dozen or so popular channels, including broadcasters and some cable networks—for a price that is between $24.99 and $39.99, one media executive close to the negotiations said.

That price range has proven challenging. The Wall Street Journal has reported on the interest from Apple, YouTube and Amazon before, but it’s been slow going. That is because many big media companies still are loath to license just one or two popular channels to a service. They typically want to sell all their most valuable networks as a group to a new entrant. Those wholesale costs add up and make it tough to hit the desired consumer price point if every big media companies is going to be part of the service.

YouTube’s and Amazon’s interests are more “real” than a year ago, media executives say. YouTube last year launched a $9.99-a-month subscription service called Red, which offers ad-free videos and streaming music. The company has sought streaming rights to TV series and movies from Hollywood studios to bolster that offering. It’s unclear whether YouTube would want to offer a streaming pay TV service through Red or separately.

Amazon has been taking steps to evolve its Prime video service to look more like a virtual cable operator. In December, the company started offering live and on-demand programming from channels such as Showtime and Starz for Prime members for as much as $8.99 extra a month. But some media executives are unsure how serious Amazon is about offering a bundle.

The wireless carriers are a new addition to the mix, though AT&T said when it bought DirecTV that a move into “over-the-top” video was part of its grand plan. AT&T has since been scant in offering details. But on a conference call late last month, AT&T CEO
Randall Stephenson
said the company is “in the process of getting some of the really critical content deals secured” and made clear that a new video offering would come this spring.

T-Mobile recently began offering a feature that delivers video at a lower quality in exchange for waiving related data fees to its customers, and CEO
John Legere
has shown an interest in offering more video options. One media executive said T-Mobile’s aspirations seem more akin to
Verizon’s
go90 mobile video service, which mostly showcases shorter-form video and offers add-on subscriptions to packages like the National Basketball Association’s League Pass.

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